St. Luke’s Medical Center–Quezon City introduces advanced radiotherapy system

St. Luke’s Medical Center–Quezon City has introduced the Philippines’ first TrueBeam Edge radiotherapy system, expanding access to advanced cancer treatment in the country.

Manufactured by Varian, a Siemens Healthineers company, the TrueBeam Edge is a system that integrates imaging, beam delivery, motion management, and patient positioning into a single platform, enabling sub-millimeter precision radiation therapy for a wide range of cancers.

“This has been a work in progress for the past couple of years,” St. Luke’s Medical Center President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis P. Serrano said during the launch on Friday.

The system sets a new benchmark for cancer treatment in the Philippines by bringing technologies previously available only in select international cancer centers to Filipino patients.

The TrueBeam Edge features sub-millimeter precision targeting, an intelligent multileaf collimator (MLC) that shapes radiation beams to match tumor contours, advanced motion management and respiratory gating, stereotactic radiosurgery for complex brain tumors and multiple metastases, image-guided radiotherapy for real-time treatment verification, high-dose rate delivery for shorter treatment sessions, and a patient positioning system for accurate patient alignment.

St. Luke’s Medical Center Department of Radiation Oncology Head Kenneth Sy said the new technology significantly reduces treatment time, allowing doctors to treat more tumors in a single session.

“We make procedures that are very tactical, and it depends on what kind of lesion you have. One lesion will take 20 to 30 minutes. We expect this machine to take less than 6 minutes for one lesion. So now it enables us to treat more lesions as well. So instead of just going to, we can go to maybe 8 or 9 in one sitting,” Mr. Sy said during an interview with the media.

Radiation oncologist Frances Lily L. Peñano said the system also shortens the overall course of radiation therapy.

“The delivery of radiation will be faster. The time spent in treatment will be shorter. And we can shorten the treatments… If it’s not for, let’s say, 6 weeks, we can shorten it to 1-3 weeks,” Ms. Peñano said.

Mr. Sy said the technology also enables higher radiation doses for smaller tumors while maintaining treatment accuracy.

“The technical part of it is, if you have bigger lesions, for example, it just takes a little longer. But the limitation is we lower the dose. Whereas with the smaller lesions, we can really go after it with higher doses. And the advantage of this is, in one sitting, you can just keep the whole thing,” Mr. Sy said.

As the only facility in the country equipped with the TrueBeam Edge, St. Luke’s–Quezon City said the technology allows patients to receive highly specialized stereotactic radiotherapy locally instead of traveling abroad.

According to the hospital, the system improves treatment precision while minimizing damage to healthy tissue, shortens treatment sessions, enhances safety through real-time tumor tracking, and expands treatment options for complex and hard-to-treat cancers, including stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT).

Ms. Peñano said most magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) guided treatments are covered by PhilHealth, while patients receiving more advanced radiation treatments may still need to pay part of the cost.

“For most of our MRI treatments, it’s covered by PhilHealth. But for the more advanced radiation treatments, part of it is still covered by PhilHealth, but maybe there’s a pay-off for the patient,” Ms. Peñano said.

She added that side effects vary depending on the treatment site but are reduced with newer technologies.

“So the side effects of the radiation treatment would depend on the area we are treating. So usually, the effects are confined to this area exposed to radiation. But of course, with the newer technologies, we can lessen the side effects. So for example, if we’re treating a tumor in the head region, the patient can have dryness of the mouth, allergies, difficulties in swallowing. And if it’s in the pelvic region, it can be diarrhea,” Ms. Peñano said.

Mr. Sy said treatment plans undergo strict safety checks to ensure radiation doses remain within safe limits.

“There are constraints that we work on and we don’t cross that. So, we always work under the curve. Meaning, we don’t give doses higher that would cause symptoms or eventual morbidity in the participation… So, we make sure that everything passes and everything is safe for the patient before we even try to start,” Mr. Sy said.

“I hope that the doctors are happy with the acquisition of the TrueBeam linear accelerator. I hope that that will translate into faster throughput, more patients served, better outcomes, and again, better satisfaction for our patients,” Mr. Serrano said.

Mr. Sy said the TrueBeam Edge technology will also be available at St. Luke’s Medical Center–Global City in Taguig by around August this year. — Kaizzer Angela Marie V. Manuba